ReVisioning the 1992 Biljmer Plane Crash, Amsterdam (& the Asiana Crash at SFO)

This morning, as I was outside in the garden, I thought I heard or felt something—more like a percussion than a sound—and I said to myself, Jeez, it feels like a bomb just went off—or a plane crash. I live near the Oakland Airport which is across the bay from the San Francisco airport. I laughed at my silliness and chalked it up to an overactive imagination.

But I was uneasy, sensing that some disaster had occurred. I came inside to check the news only to find my Twitter feed going crazy.

What I saw on my screen: a tweet from Samsung executive, David Eun: "I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal..." And he posted a photo of the crippled jet. Asiana Airline accident today at SFO. Oh no! So I wasn't imagining things.

There were 290 to 350 passengers on board from Seoul to SFO. Someone said: it's a hard landing, no landing gear. Another eye-witness said the plane struck the seawall, then the tail ripped off, and it cartwheeled off Ramp 28. (I think it just slid off the tarmac). The fuselage also caught fire as people fled the plane, sliding down the inflatable emergency ramps. Suitcases were scattered everywhere like flotsam. Or maybe it was a herd of Goats R Us weed-whacker goats rubbernecking.

As I followed the grisly news reports, an image I thought I had forgotten, came to mind. Another plane crash, from long ago, in another country. So, I let my fingers do some web walking as I waited for the news to unfold.

In 1992, I witnessed an Israeli cargo airplane crash in Amsterdam. An El Al Boeing 747 plane circling from Schiphol Airport was flying unusually low over the IJsselmeer, when I heard a pop overhead, and then a big splash right next to me.

We walked along the Durgerdam, admiring the sunset. —Wiki

My friend Vinz said we were just outside the village near the Durgerdam bus stop. Durgerdam is 7 km east of Dam Square. We were walking along the dyke of the IJsselmeer, admiring the colors on the water, the October sunset in North Holland. Everything on fire. Beauty everywhere.

We were walking on that peninsula above the red dot at Durgerdam —Wiki

I thought the splash I heard was an improbable seal or an even more unlikely whale breaching—not even remotely possible in the artificial enclosed lake, that is the IJssel, which is a branch, or tributary of the Rhine. I laughed at my foolish notion. OK, one helluva big fish, then.

But as the events unfolded, I quickly put it together that the pop I heard was the El Al Boeing 747 plane's right wing engine exploding, and the splash—the engine falling into the water. That was awfully close, that engine could've fallen on us, had the plane been over land (as the flight map I posted below suggests—but it's wrong). 

Then, we watched, stunned, as the eastbound plane veered hard right over land and plowed into two high rise buildings of Bijlmer. The fireball as it struck the apartments was like an atomic blast—we could hear and feel it from miles away. I took photos of the fireball but I couldn't override the automatic camera flash—and so, I got nothing on film.  

We made our way back to the crash site. The Boeing 747 crashed into the Bijlmermeer, near the Elsrijkdreef- Bijlmerdreef T-intersection. I remember looking up in a linden tree to see an airplane seatbelt, a melted Barbie doll, and fuel dripping from the leaves like rain. I took more photos and there was no way home but to walk. All transport from Biljmer was cut off. All busses were being used as ambulances.

Why did the El Al pilot bank 90° right, into the housing project instead of flying over the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuiderzee) where he could've crash-landed on the water? Surely the pilot knew he was in trouble long before he reached land.

At 6:35 pm, the first officer radioed to ATC: "Going down, #1862, going down, going down, copy, going down." In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear. —Bijlmerramp, Wiki

They say 48 people died a the Bijlmerramp—but we saw busloads of bodies leaving. There was a huge population of undocumented illegal immigrants living there as well—and everyone was at home in time for Sunday dinner.

We were walking along the shore to the north of the final green line. Pilot was flying over the water when the right engine fell off. He banked and turned. Everything in slo-mo. This map is wrong, as we were near Durgerdam, walking east, the plane passed me on the right, not the left side.

Then came the cover-up. What was in the plane: fertilizer, petro-, and bio-chemicals? Bomb fixings? No news, no answers anywhere. I was interviewed by Amsterdam Underground Radio—the reporter was positive it was some sort of conspiracy but I didn't feed the beast of paranoia. Merely reported what I saw, and deduced. Too well trained by my editor, Nick Valentine, to let the crazed reporter lead me.

From GoogleEarth

Today's crash at SFO brought the memory of the Biljmer crash back in startling clarity. Another Boeing. Two people have been confirmed dead & at least 130 injured, with 41 in critical condition. Such a tragedy. Amazing that so many survived. We should not be witnessing things like this. It brings back the vivid images of 9/11 as well. The things we can never erase form our minds, leaving us shellshocked.

Will the final verdict also be metal fatigue as well? Or pilot error? Or both? My cousin is a mechanic for United at SFO. Maybe we'll get another picture from the mechanics who will be working on the plane. I'll post later, if we do. Meanwhile, if you landed at this blog in error, I've posted some Asiana links below.

A Mantra for the Mujahedeen

     Say it over and over again until it makes sense.

Gospodi, gospodi pomilui / mujahedeen relentlessly echoes in my head. I’m caught in a convocation of languages in the cracks between tongues as I watch the World Trade Center towers fall again and again in slo-mo, and I can’t seem to make sense of it in my native tongue. It becomes a mantra: gospodi/ mujahedeen /gospodi. Why is it that Old Church Slavonic is colliding with Arabic mid-thought? God have mercy on us/ a holy war. Say jihad. Say it over and over again until it makes sense. Gospodi/mujahedeen. But it will never make sense.

I have no skills to comprehend the images of those who held hands as they plunged to their death. I cannot grapple with the word jihad or the rhetoric of Psalm 23 in any language. Say it. Say it again. Does it ease the burden of grief? In Arabic numerals the victims dial 9-11 –- all circuits are jammed. Those still trapped beneath 100 floors of rubble are calling their loved ones one last time for a final goodbye — to say: "I’m fine," before the batteries fail and the building shifts. Yea, though those who leapt unto the shadow of the Valley of Death — to say, "I love you." Je t’aime, or Te amo to perfect strangers during freefall, and really mean it. What went through their minds?

Arabic: the names of stars. Aldebaran, zenith, zero, zealot. The sky, so silent, no birds flying. Mea maxima culpa. Gospodi. There are no words in any language that will do justice.

I’m studying ancient manuscripts and I am reminded that it was medieval Arabs, in love with knowledge who saved the writings of the classical world after the Vikings destroyed the Irish copies. In medias res. In the middle of things. An Irish monk scribed in the margin: We walk in one another’s shadows.

Across the centuries, Shadowlands and Second Comings cannot ease the burden. We grow old with grief. We attempt normalcy, resurrect schedules. We dust off the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, unspoken since childhood — in my case, nearly 40 years ago. Dressed in red white and blue, thousands of Americans line up to donate blood. Even those in other countries are giving blood: Yasser Arafat among them.

In front of Sproul Hall at Berkeley, I pass a girl who nervously fingers her dove-grey hijab. Her pale eyes reflect a palpable fear. Already there have been acts of violence against Middle Easterners bearing American flags. It’s like a bad dèja vú of the ’60s at Berkeley. In San Francisco, an Armenian-American greengrocer is mistaken for the enemy. Animal blood is spilled on his doorstep. But he was born here. A Middle Eastern woman holding an American flag shops for dinner, in the pram, her baby wears a flag. A beefy man with a flag the size of a bedsheet strapped to his Harley with a broomstick vigilantly patrols the parking lot. An elderly Mexican man gives away red, white & blue roses to women. What else is there to do?

In class, we trade war stories: Five years ago, I witnessed an Israeli cargo plane fall out of the sky, a harbinger of things to come. The engine exploded, and I heard it fall into the sea. A mushroom cloud of fuel consumed a refugee complex. I thought Armageddon had begun. I still can’t shake images of debris draped from a tree — was it the pilot’s seatbelt? A mangled Barbie doll amid fuselage and ashes. The Israeli linguist remembers last year’s sniper who missed her twice, as she stood on the terrace overlooking the Arab Ouarter. A half-hearted attempt at a simple target. We deconstruct words as our world, buried beyond recognition, offers little solace.

On TV, we watch rescue workers gather round a fire truck, burned beyond recognition — an altar for the more than 300 dead firemen. One man recalls driving over too many body parts to count. Numanistics: I want to slide into the perfection of absolute zero. At Ground Zero, cabbies rip the seats from their cabs to carry the dead. New lines form at blood banks — solace from the living. Barges carry the dead across the River Styx because the island can’t contain all her dead. The living flee across Brooklyn Bridge. or escape TO New Jersey, of all places! Anything to get off the island.

How many degrees of separation are any of us from the dead? We are all at Ground Zero, because on that Tuesday, each of us died a little. I am one degree of separation from Alan Beavans, who was on Flight 93. I cannot think in abstractions, I can only understand this atrocity in terms of individuals. At midnight I find myself chanting a kaddish of the names of my Middle Eastern friends. Among them, Oleg. Where is Oleg, my Armenian friend who took me into the churches of Kiev where we listened to the choir singing gospodi?

Today, I learn a new word: Taliban. And another: jihad. This jihad is like Ireland in that the memory of hatred is older than the civilization that raised it. I can’t help but think of the gyre of the last plague-ridden millennium where, thinking that the end of the world was buried in the calendral equation of zeroes, Anglo-Saxon crusaders stormed Jerusalem — annihilating both Arabs and Christians alike on the temple steps, making all religion null and void. Armageddon resurfaces amid the pond scum of right-wing fundamentalists and racists exorcising rites of free speech, and latent seeds sprout in a new field, fertilized by the blood of civilians. The president’s myopic message is about an eye for an eye, but nothing is black and white — especially not blood.

The sky, so quiet, even the birds are not flying. A raven lands in front of us, sharpens his beak. Another joins him. War birds of the Irish, come to remind us they are hungry for eyes. My grandmother said that when the wild birds enter the house, it is a sure sign of death. A hummingbird stops to eye me. He sways and dips as if in benediction — making a sign of the cross — and takes off. Without a metaphor in common with the terrorists, I imagine I am blessed by birds, but tell me why is it that the wrens are huddling around the bird feeder, and fluttering at the windows as if to get in? Too late I remember that in Aztec mythology the hummingbird, Huitzilipochtli, is the god of war.

At candlelight vigils, we learn a new term: asymmetrical warfare, as if geometry were a country of refuge. In this way, we also learned terms from the Gulf War: collateral damage, and friendly fire. I’m afraid that in the weeks and months ahead will be full of such euphemisms. The city is on "yellow alert." On the steps of City Hall, we gather for an interfaith memorial service. A Baptist preacher prays, "Oh Lord please help the President to make the right decision — not the one he wants to make." It is also Jumnah Sabat: What are they praying for at the mosques? A Muslim-American says, "This has nothing to do with our religion that teaches tolerance, peace and harmony." I want to believe him but what about the fundamentalists on both sides? I am lost in the biblical equations that come tumbling down. I find a pair of gilt harem slippers dumped on the street and worry about the woman who last wore them: her foot, the same size as mine. I am that woman behind the veil as well.

Gospodi God have mercy on the unholy warriors, the mujahedeen, for we know not what they do, for the word of Allah is not their witness. Written on the wind, the names of the innocent dead, Muslims among them. Say their names 5000 times, say them again until it becomes a mantra. Gospodi pomilui, mujahedeen, Islam, shalom, salaam. As God is their witness, may the gates of heaven always be beyond the reach of terrorists.

How silent is the sky. Huddled around the bird feeder, even the doves are refusing to fly.

© 2001Maureen Hurley Reprinted from Killing the Buddha A Mantra for the Mujahedeen

POEM TO A MAN LEAVING HIMSELF BEHIND

POEM TO A MAN LEAVING HIMSELF BEHIND

As the plane taxiing out the runway,
a rainbow appeared right in front of the storm.
The plane’s red shark fins slice through the clouds,
as if to sever the rainbow for hope, for the gays,
for the artists, a rainbow for all of us.
Afraid of flying, you eat Mary’s brownies
I smuggled through security,
the plane was delayed and so we had a beer.
We are more than a little intoxicated,
chemicals within, chemicals without.
Last night I heard you whisper thank you for being there
as you turned out my light, kissing me good night
and then sleeping alone. It was not our time for love.
but the love is there nonetheless, yes the pull.
The heart wants what it wants.
Vins says you’re equally gay, I say equally straight.
But we kept kissing each other goodbye anyway,
your hand slipping down my back, skin against skin,
as you said, thank you for being my mother,
my sister, my grandmother, my brother, my...
stopping at the word that won’t rest easily upon lips.
I thought unrequited love was reserved for old plays.
Watching your plane rise, momentary smoke,
my heart in my throat, remembering the plane crash
I witnessed at the Bijlmer, and in Portugal.
Your plane pierces the sky, one moment a black dot,
another, gone forever. Will I ever see you again?
And I think of your fear of flying,
especially after the Dutch airplane disaster,
you said you didn’t want to be buried
in the hinterlands of Leissel,
you wanted to be among friends. And you said,
how lonely you are for no boys will sleep with you,
and the despair that you loved women too.
You get lost at the point between a woman’s breasts.
What I will remember is you rising up from the bath,
all brown and golden, a tawny feline,
something gorgeous to behold.
My eye grabbing that moment in time.
With your photography—the impulses in the moment of taking,
a thief of light, whereas mine is in the taking of images,
without film. A thief of memory.
These are the words of our lives.

1/7/93
SFO
First draft